


The Future Tense of Fear

by fairbreeze



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blood, Gore, Gunkink, M/M, because it's not gunplay if no one is playing, i am not kidding about the blood, no one cares about consent, so much blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:26:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbreeze/pseuds/fairbreeze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, things that are dead don’t stay dead.  Sometimes, things that are forgotten are (not) better off forgotten.  Sometimes, the monsters are under our skin, waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future Tense of Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Beautiful Stranger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065280) by [M_Moonshade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/M_Moonshade). 



> This has been puttering around in my head since I read M_Moonshade's [The Beautiful Stranger](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1065280). Given the subject matter of this work, I am uncomfortable calling this anything like a "sequel" because I don't want to imply in the slightest that this was a dynamic that another writer intended to imply. However, this was directly inspired by that work and refers to events that happen in it. Also, you should just generally read all of M_Moonshade's writing because it is lovely.
> 
> The title is yoinked, mercilessly, from "Eternal Scouts".
> 
> **WARNING** : I do not think that this story contains either dubious consent or coercive sex and I have tried to write it in such a manner that the absence of both is obvious. However, it is arguable how much a lack of consent would matter. If you have any issues with dubious consent or violent or coercive sex, you may not want to read this story.

Well, _this_ was an embarrassing way to die. As far as last thoughts went, that wasn’t a real great one either, but Kevin really only had time to process one regret before the creature tore into him and the one where he died at the end was a greater regret than the one where he just looked sort of foolish inside his own head. The thing (was it a crocodile? It looked vaguely like a crocodile.) streaked forward, opened its jaws around him and then clamped them together and the world erupted into noise and blood. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as he had been fearing and he spent a few moments wondering why people screamed and ran from the violence of death, if it felt so freeing and painless.

It took him a minute to realize that he was still breathing, that the jaws of the creature had not already crushed his lungs and spine and all the soft, squishy rest of him. When he dared to crack open his eyes, he realized that was because the creature’s _entire top jaw_ and most of its head was missing. The blood covering him was slightly blacker than he would have expected and also definitely not his. Which meant the noise was...

He swiveled his head, more curious than afraid, and found himself looking down the barrel of a gun from about twenty feet away. The gun was held in a hand that was attached, as hands typically were, to an arm which was attached, not quite so typically, to the body of a dead man. It was the man, the one from the building, the one who had seemed to know him. The one who had _kissed_ him, warm and blood-covered and _familiar_. He’d never remembered his name, hadn’t really thought much about him after the building came down, but there had been so much to do in the wake of whatever StrexCorp had done to the town. He used to think about him, sometimes, usually late at night and alone, but it was mostly idle speculation, mind not even supplying half-formed memories to help him along and he had stopped after a few weeks. As something of a local celebrity, he’d ended up shouldering a lot of work for cleaning things up around Desert Bluffs, late nights of reporting and helping coordinate the town’s efforts and he hadn’t had time to think about a strange man and a blood-soaked kiss and why he had told him he was better off forgetting him.

“Oh. I thought you were dead,” was what came out of his mouth, calmer than he felt he probably should be. But something was tied up in his head, a soft sort of static, because the man was very dead and also very handsome and the gun looked as deadly as the man was _perfect_. No. It had been _proven_ to be as deadly as the man was perfect and it was trained, now, on him. His stomach did a slow, lazy roll and he was sort of vaguely aware that he probably ought to get out of the over-sized crocodile-creature’s lower jaws, but even if the gun wasn’t trained on him he wasn’t entirely sure his legs would support him right now, anyway.

“Well. The more things change…” the man said, “Did you remember who I was?” it was said in a measured voice, but casually, as though he hadn’t just come back from the dead, saved Kevin’s life and was now openly threatening it again.

“No,” if Kevin had known what answer the man was looking for he would have given it in a heartbeat, but he didn’t, so he went, cautiously, for the truth. Given the damage he’d done with a single shot to the creature, Kevin was pretty sure if the man pulled the trigger on the gun they were going to have to identify him from his _teeth_. He wasn’t exactly afraid, people normally didn’t go around saving people they wanted dead, but then they also didn’t normally go around pointing guns at people they wanted to live, either. 

Then again, this wouldn’t have been the first time…

“I’ve wondered,” Kevin continued, because his one word answer didn’t seem sufficient, “But I haven’t remembered anything and no one I talked to seemed to know who you were, either. I mean, people know who you _were_ , in a sort of theoretical sense but not…” _but not why you would have kissed me, but not who we were to each other_. He trailed off. The gun was distracting. His _reaction_ to the gun was distracting. He was in mortal danger; he didn’t think the man would hesitate even a _moment_ to shoot him if he gave him a reason to do so and he had no idea what he wanted, what would count as a reason. But he had just _killed_ for him, to protect him, brutal and awful and Kevin was soaked in the proof of that, blood seeping into his shirt, pants, coating the inside of his thighs, warm against his skin and he… he _knew_ this. He _remembered_ this.

Everything felt like it was moving in a dream as he slowly raised his head out of looking down at himself to stare up at the man. There was nothing on the man’s face to indicate anything, no emotion, no sense of whether Kevin’s answer was the right one, but he was crossing over to him, gun still pointed at his chest, measured, slow. Kevin sat up slowly to match, because something about the man being closer to him put a strange kind of iron in his spine, magnetism, until he was on his knees in the body of the creature, staring up at pupils so wide that his eyes appeared black, though Kevin somehow knew they were a rich, cognac-brown. The gun nudged at his collarbone and he held very still, just staring, 

“I should kill you, before you have the chance to remember. It would be kinder,” he did not pull the trigger.

“If you believe that,” Kevin’s voice was reasonable, calm, but it sounded to his own ears like it was a million miles away, all of his focus on those eyes, a rushing in his ears, “why didn’t you let the monster kill me?”

“Because you’re _mine_. If anyone’s going to kill you, it’s going to be me. No one else gets to have the _pleasure_ ,” his opposite hand clenched but his trigger finger was steady, careful, _deliberate_. He would not hurt Kevin on accident. _You’re mine_. Something twisted inside of him, all sick nostalgia and longing, even though he didn’t know what he was longing _for_ and he was bowing his head, forehead coming to rest on the man’s hand, gently, before he had even realized he was going to move.

“You are not kind,” he said the words with absolutely certainty, lips moving against the metal of the gun, “You will not kill me out of kindness.”

“No,” came the answer, a moment later, and there was such tenderness and _want_ in the man’s voice that Kevin felt a shiver flow down his spine, “No, I will not,” he paused and Kevin didn’t move, barely breathed, waiting, “The memories should be gone,” he said, dismissively, gesturing with his other hand, “I designed the technology myself. It was a failsafe, to make sure you wouldn’t remember if you fell into the wrong hands. They _should_ be, but we never tested it over the long-term before we fitted you with the device. I wasn’t sure…”

“You want me to remember, even though you know it will hurt me, even though it means you will have failed,” Kevin was suddenly very sure of that as well.

“Yes.” Kevin lifted his head, slowly, leaned forward just the tiniest bit, mouth tipping up the barrel of the gun until his lips touched skin instead, just the barest brush, following a set of instincts he didn’t understand but beat under his skin like drums, like thunder, 

“So then, what is it that you are going to do?” There was a long silence while he looked up the line of this stranger and watched things shift and settle and _harden_ in his eyes. 

Even so, the hand on his collar caught him off-guard, sudden and unexpected, faster, even, than his normally quick reaction time. After a moment that felt frozen in amber, time stilled and stopped, dreamlike, it was _brutal_ being yanked to his feet with enough force to bloom a ring of bruises around his throat from his shirt-collar. He knew, without seeing, that they would match the ones that had been there when he had taken the metal one off. His knees went weak. He barely had time to make a noise, some literally strangled thing, choking on his own necktie, before he was put against a wall with enough force to rattle his teeth, painfully. He gasped for air, desperately trying to force his body to react fast enough to get his feet under him, force them to take his weight so that he wasn’t hanging by his neck in the man’s grip. He clenched his hands automatically in the man’s lapels, pulling, trying to get _air_ … and then the man’s tongue was in his mouth and his body took his weight for him, pressing him against the wall. His touch boiled fire under his skin and he still couldn’t breathe but for an entirely different set of reasons, barely recognizing the noise he made, deep in his throat, as anything _human_ , much less as anything his.

The next moment something _surged_ inside him and he got his hands tangled in that perfectly styled hair, messing it all up and pushed off the wall, harder into the kiss, scraping his own tongue deliberately along the man’s teeth hard enough that he whimpered from it. Hands caught suddenly in his own hair in response and his head was wrenched back, hard, against the wall. Teeth sank into his neck a moment later, viciously and he half-screamed, clinging, leg caught around the stranger’s hip and his own rolling up into his, desperately, when the bite turned into harsh suction. 

_Gods_ what was he _doing_? His hands were still clenched on the man’s lapels, ruining his suit even as his own shirt wouldn’t be the same, tie wrenched sideways and buttons popped so the man could leave a line of blooming bruises across his collar bone, down his chest. Kevin moaned for each one of them, caught in the grips of something he couldn’t explain, brought from certain death to dream-like revelation to _this_ , something primal clawing its way up from inside him, reacting to something _savage_ under the pressed suit and immaculate hair of the other man. 

When the man dumped him down to the floor in the remains of the creature, he didn’t protest. He just got up to his hands and knees in it, arms shaking and covered with gore to the elbows now. When the man mauled open his pants and shoved them down, the noise he made was unholy, but not unwelcoming and when he dipped fingers in the still-viscous blood of the thing and pushed them inside him, too rough and too much, too fast, he _howled_ and pushed himself back on them, harder.

“ _Why_?” he stammered out a moment later, breathless, each word punctuated by driving himself backwards, very much aware that the motion was all his, that all the man had needed to do was get his fingers in him and he was opening _himself_ up on them, “Why? Why? Why? _Why_? More, _please_ … you… _Why_?” he wasn’t even really sure what he was asking, whether he wanted to know why the man was doing this or why he was reacting like this or if he thought that the man might have deeper secrets, deeper meaning, hidden beneath his skin. The man seemed, in that moment, more like a god than a man, like an unholy force inside him, fingers twisting deeper a moment before a hand clenched around his hip, half-soothing, half-implacably preventing his next mad thrust backwards, 

“So easy to rile up,” his voice was a purr, soothing and deep, different from the emotionless tone he had before, “so _sensitive_ , my dearest little Kevin. You’re so lovely like this, half-mad for me. You’re always so lovely like this. How could I resist coming back for you?”

“You were dead. I saw you die,” it was meaningless, it was just something to say. It clearly didn’t bother him enough to stop him from twisting his hips backwards in a slow grind against the man’s hand now that he couldn’t move how he wanted to, a slow whine building in the back of his throat.

“You thought you saw me die. I thought I saw you live. Clearly, we were both mistaken,” how did he sound so _calm_ when Kevin felt like he was going to fall apart at any moment? “I missed you,” he said, fingers sliding out of him and Kevin did, finally, make a noise of protest, biting his lip until it bled to keep from _begging_ when he heard the sound of metal and leather, the wicked purr of a zipper. A hand slid wet down his spine a moment later, until fingers could curl at his neck, forcing his face down almost into the pool under them, back pushed into an angle that made him feel exposed, like he was presenting himself to the man behind him. He made another noise, pleading, and curled his spine more, almost involuntarily.

He didn’t have the leverage to push back like this, when the man started to slide inside him and the pace was glacial. It was kinder, some part of his head tried to tell him, gave him time to get used to the stretch, ran less of a risk of injuring him badly but the man was _not kind_ and it also gave him time to feel every inch of him, the stretch and burn slow and maddening and with nothing at all to distract from it. He was making little choked, sobbing sort of noises before the end of it, pleading, unable to even pretend that what he was pleading for was anything other than _more_ , not with the way his hips twitched and the back of his spine writhed. He was a mess. He never wanted to be anything _but_ a mess.

After that, the sex was almost secondary.

The man controlled it absolutely at first, one hand on his hip and the other eventually tangled in his hair, pulling his head back, turning his spine into a bow. Eventually, he let Kevin move how _he_ wanted to, which was too fast, too erratic to build to anything, brutal and writhing, hands slipping in the gore for leverage. But it was the end that turned him to screaming, hands on his hips, the pace hard and deep, vicious and perfect, perfect, _perfect_ , bruises raising against the bone from the force needed.

He didn’t even have a name to scream when he came.

Afterwards there was just a kind of space, something that felt like silence, although both of them were breathing too loud and fast in the stillness of the room. The man slid sideways, holding onto him so that he wouldn’t slide out just yet, until they were lying down, spooned mostly inside the remains of the creature’s mouth. There was an arm under Kevin’s head, considerate, so that he could relax and not have to hold his head out of the gore and when he let himself loll his head backwards into the man’s shoulder, he gained a soft purr of pleasure from him, a hand sliding warm, pleased and possessive against his skin.

A moment later, the warm was replaced by cool, the metal of the gun, retrieved from wherever it had gone, tracing up along the outside of his thigh. Kevin was too tired to do much, but he could feel his cock _try_ to twitch at it, his muscles flutter around the man, still inside him, like he would lose control of himself all over again, if he could only _move_. He moaned for it instead, shivered when the man rubbed the barrel into the hollow of his hips, the join of his thigh to torso. The man slid it slowly, caressingly, up his chest and Kevin tilted his head on his shoulder, obligingly, to give it room to nestle right up under his ear.

“You’re _mine_ , whether you remember me or not,” his voice was low, breath like a caress against Kevin’s neck.

“If I deny it, you’re going to shoot me,” it was not a question, but the man answered anyway, 

“Yes. I am,” his face was pressed against the same ear as the gun. They would have to unsort their teeth. The thought shouldn’t be romantic. Kevin closed his eyes, felt the viscera cooling around them. The gun could be empty, or broken, or absent, and he knew his answer would still be the same, 

“Yes. Yes of course I am,” it was said as though it were foolish to even ask. It was foolish to ask. He could feel the man’s lips curl against the shell of his ear and he felt his own pull into a smile in response. There was the wet of a mouth around the lobe and Kevin smiled and shuddered and waited for the teeth.


End file.
